Don't Be Dead
by Lady Sam Mallory
Summary: John stuck inside his own head after the Reichenbach Fall. Stream of Consciousness Piece. Short, but complete. Definite spoilers for Reichenbach.


**Don't Be Dead**

Author: Lady Sam Mallory

Disclaimers: Boys not mine; I just borrow them from time to time when the muse moves me.

Special Thanks to my Beta Queen, Zoe, without whom I'd be doomed to a life of grammatical inaccuracy. For my beautiful friend, Heather, whose incredible command of the English language allows her to provide me with individually needed words at a moment's notice.

Warnings: H/C, Angst, Smarm, Some violence, and usually a bit of colorful language.

Spoilers: Reichenbach

* * *

The Fall…It's all I think about. Not any fall, but The Fall that changed everything.

"Don't be dead," I murmur again and again. I hear it whispered on the wind, whenever I go outside, which I can now admit is not often.

I'm a doctor. Doctor John Hamish Watson, at your service, if I were practicing, that is, which I most certainly am not.

I have been a doctor for a very long time. I have seen war. I know death, intimately and yet I still have so many questions.

How could he do it? I mean really, how the hell could he do it?

How did I miss that he was so far gone? I missed it. I was his only friend and I bloody well missed it! Actually, this one I can answer, but I hate the answer to it. I missed it because he didn't allow me to see it. That damned selfish git did not allow me to see it!

How could he do that? How?

One question that niggles my brain daily is how my body keeps living without a heart. He is my best friend. He was my best friend. "Don't be dead," I whisper again.

It has become the mantra by which I survive the fall. I will not say it. Ella wants me to say it, but I WILL…NOT…SAY…IT!

That bastard, Moriarty. He told…Sherlock that he would burn the heart out of him. He may have done just that by his wicked lies, but moreover, he burned the heart out of me, only the sodding thing will not stop beating. Every beat of it kills me a little more each day, yet it does not stop.

It foolishly believes that everything is spot on. How does that happen?

Do you know what it's like to watch your best friend unravel before your very eyes? To watch as he descends into darkness. When he goes to a place where you cannot follow and cannot save him.

Ella reminds me, quite often actually, that I am still alive. Yes, thanks for that. I am still alive and…Sher…he would want me to go on. How the bloody hell does she know that? She can sod right off, I tell you, because she did not know him. Did not know his brilliant mind. The intuitive leaps that he could make in mere seconds.

Don't be dead…

The official cause of…well it was blunt force trauma as a result of multiple skull fractures and a sternal fracture that culminated in an endocardial tear of the atria that in essence crushed his heart with the weight of the blood pooling in his chest cavity.

Don't be dead…

Moriarty took his heart. He did not burn it. He crushed it with the weight of his lies, but Moriarty is dead by his own hand. An awful lot of that going around. Sod it!

Don't be dead…

Molly told me that he, that Sherlock, did not suffer. The bastard! Why the bloody hell should he get off so flipping easy? That bloody wanker! He feels no pain now. No more need for a coffin nail. No more seven percent solution.

I need to crash out, but I move through rote memorization of what my mind believes that my body should do.

I can't believe that he's gone. It's rubbish, that's what it is and I won't believe it even though I have to. I have to believe it even if I won't bloody say it!

How could I miss the fall? I see it over and over again. When I nod off. When I wake. Every fucking minute of every fucking day. I see it! It's always there. That hell vision that torments me. Ella must think that I'm a nutter. Maybe she's right.

Let's be honest, here. I'm completely knackered. It's been one month, sixteen hours, and forty eight minutes since I slept well at least and I've gone a bit round the twist. I know that.

I see it clearly as the day it happened. The Fall…

It takes a long time to fall. Did you know that? Fall from grace… or fall from sanity or fall from….a building. It happens slowly. Drawn out nearly more than is bearable. I saw him whole and then he was broken. Broken into pieces.

My best mate drenched in his own blood. Blood that he spilled. Folded up like a broken poppet, a marionette with his strings cut.

That right minger clipped his strings as if he cut out my flipping heart. I need a kip, but it won't come. At least, not for long and not pleasant. I wake up screaming his name or worse, not screaming his name because my voice has been nicked as well.

How much can be pinched from one man before he breaks apart?

I actually know the answer to this bloody question. The answer is one moment.

One moment. One single strand of seconds compiling to minutes is more than enough to destroy a man. How do I know? I know because I am all of that man that is left.


End file.
